Last week, imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan called for a ceasefire, lending momentum to the Turkish-Kurdish peace process. But negotiating with Turkey will not satisfy the Kurds’ burning need for political self-determination. An Essay … //

… A Radical Kurdish Awareness:

The PKK has good reasons to negotiate with the Turkish state over the coming weeks and months. Violence has lost its purpose, and political action seems more sensible. But these pragmatic reasons cannot satisfy the deep need of the Kurdish people to achieve a concrete framework for the long-sought control of their region. This is also the case with other belated nations in contemporary Europe. Scotland and Catalonia only wanted to secede from their superordinate government federations after these states took their place under the larger umbrella of the European Union.

If we assume that the Kurds actually wanted to join forces with other peoples of the Middle East to form a democratic union of Anatolia-Mesopotamia with open borders, as Öcalan apparently envisions, could the Turks accept this?

Today, even assimilated Kurds show a radical Kurdish awareness. And it is precisely this heightened self-confidence that is the actual problem for the Turks. After all, these days hardly any of them still has objections to the Kurds speaking their own language and enjoying equal rights.

But it is another story altogether when it comes to controlling a region. The majority of Turks still strictly reject the Kurdish demand for a special status.